


For now, we are married

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, Mistaken for Being in a Relationship, POV Second Person, Podfic Available, Sibling Love, romantic sibling love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 02:29:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5146949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You wonder what they see when they watch you, your arm around her shoulders and her head resting on your chest. You know she’s counting your heart’s beat and you will it slow and steady for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For now, we are married

**Author's Note:**

> Commentfic [originally posted here](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/667584.html?thread=88881088#t88881088) for the prompt "They're fugitives so sometimes everyone has to pretend they're a couple."
> 
> River's dinosaur wedding has lines from [Shakespeare's Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180775) and [Married Love by Kuan Tao-sheng](https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/kuan-tao-sheng-valentine)

She was so bright, her light shone in every direction, searching out every dark corner. So wise, too wise, never the child that you were, but still she loved mysteries, stories, the beauty of the unsolved equation and the evolving dance were one within her incendiary mind. She burned so bright you worried that one day you might find yourself afraid to look away, afraid to blink your eyes and find yourself blind to everything that was not her.

She rejected baby dolls with their too-big eyes and toes that wouldn’t point, she tired of them and played instead with lifelike toys and detailed models. Spaceships and dump trucks had personalities she would explain at great length, and you would listen. She knew the secret psychology of the back hoe, chronicled the jealousy that developed between the Pterodactyl and the Parasaurolophus when dinosaurs became her favorite. You once attended the marriage ceremony between two of her most beloved, a Utahraptor and a Leptoceratops, conducted in the Old Style. The ancient Chinese words flowed from her lips clearer than the robed priests at the temple where you went sometimes with your mother, and she asked you to hold one of them, the Leptoceratops you think it was, and let you fumble through his vows. All lovers young, all lovers must, Consign to thee, and come to dust. Ashes to ashes and clay to clay, In life we share a single quilt, In death we will share one bed. And now we’re married, she said with a sigh. The toys were cuddled together in her arms, but her smile was all for you.

You recognize that smile on your sister’s face, now, again. No longer a child but more childlike than ever before. She didn’t need you, then, except to stand in and play the extra parts, to stand in place while she twirled around you, living a dozen lives, a hundred, while you held true to your one life, stayed on the path you set for yourself and watched to see where she would land. She needs you now, as much as you need her. Your path no longer true you’ve stepped into the sky with her, and here today she is smiling at you. Asking you to play, asking you to speak your vows. 

And what a pair of newlyweds you are. Surely no stranger than the others gathered around you. The rough-hewn traveller on the arm of a woman who could not be other than a former Companion; a large man whose bulk somehow accentuates the strength and fire of the knife edged woman beside him. Wash complained, loudly, about someone else on the arm of his wife but he was needed elsewhere for this job and the two of them, pilot and mechanic, will need the excuse to disappear together once they get through the door. You’re glad, quietly, that you’re not the only ones paired off where you shouldn’t be. 

You wonder, standing there on the deck of this unfamiliar ship, watching the other passengers cut a wide berth around Zoe and Jayne, watching your captain bamboozle the mark, drawing his attention so Kaylee and Wash can slip off with specious giggles and dopey grins, don’t-follow-us signed in the language of her hand in his back pocket, his fingers in her hair, you watch and you wonder. You wonder what they see when they watch you, your arm around her shoulders and her head resting on your chest. You know she’s counting your heart’s beat and you will it slow and steady for her. You wonder if they can see exactly what you see — and wonder is it better or worse if they cannot. 

Sometimes it seems to you that Big Brother is your whole self now. She is so small that your arm encompasses her body and your hand spans her hip entirely. You hold on because you are in a strange place. You hold on because you are needed here. You hold on because you do not know how to let go. You wonder that anyone could look at you and see what you are pretending, like the rest of them, to be. A couple, a couple of newlyweds, a couple of travelers who belong in a place like this. You wonder that no one can _see_ that the way she fits against you is because she’s never known life without you. Baby sister, yours only the second pair of hands ever to hold her, yours only the second beating heart ever to lull her heavy head to sleep. 

And now we’re married, she says to you on a sigh, on a smile that says she knows she’s far away, she knows why you worry. Yes, you tell her. For now, we are. She has to stand on your feet, balanced on her toes, to reach your cheek. She feels like a flame, like rain. To hold her is to hold fire and water both, Creation’s spark in your arms. I am in your clay, you tell her. You are in my clay, she replies. She smiles. She burns so bright you find yourself afraid to look away.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] For now, we are married](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13790151) by [Azdaema Pods (Azdaema)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azdaema/pseuds/Azdaema%20Pods)




End file.
